Star Wars: Old Republic is 'fastest-growing subs MMO ever'

CVG: More than one million players registered for the online game in its first few days of release, says the publisher, with the first wave of players posting impressive play-time feats, including: Logged 28 million in-game hours - roughly equivalent to watching all six Star Wars movies, two million times Averaged well over five hours a day playing the game Created more than 3.8 million characters; 510,000 Jedi Knights and 550,000 Sith Warriors Killed more than two billion non-player characters in the eight days since Early Game Access began

We won't really know until the next WoW expansion. Should be interesting to see what happens then.

I still have a lot of doubts regarding TOR's retention. I have a feeling that Bioware's own formula will work against them in the MMO space. The goal for me in Bioware games is always to see all of the content. So you create a character for each class (and mix the gender up in the process) and play through the multiple story paths. For a single player game, this means many playthroughs and a lot of enjoyment. It also means most characters are essentially throw away. Encouraging throw away characters in an MMO is likely a mistake. A player's connection to their in-game avatar is one of the biggest reasons players remain dedicated to an MMO for long periods of time. The biggest reason is the people. Players make friends in the virtual world and it's tough to cut them off entirely. By encouraging multiple playthroughs on either side, that's like to also have an impact on the relationships built.

TLDR: I get the feeling that a lot of people are likely to play SWTOR as a single player game and move on once they've completed the various storylines. The fact that they are the "fastest growing subscription MMO ever" is probably irrelevant, since they're not competing in the MMO space, but rather with their own single player games, which sell way more in an even shorter amount of time.

Actually even against their single player games they are selling better so far . None of their games did 1.6 millions in 1-2 weeks like SWTOR , even when combining 360-pc and ps3 sales .

And the issue you noted with SWTOR was the same with WoW . At first many people played WoW alone in their corner or at most induos , given the immense ammount of easy soloable quests . Helle even the first few raid were soloable or possible in small groups . It's mostly after a while and with high level players gettings antsy that the focus changed and Blizzard dropped tons of Raid and group content .

Every Quest orientated mmos face that at first , and swtor would obviously even more when it actually feature single player level storylines

Mass Effect 2 sold more than 2M in its first week, just on 360 (and with a much shorter and less expensive dev cycle). Just as a footnote.

Regarding how the endgame and retention will play out, it's a wait-and-see kind of situation. I'm sure Bioware and EA will be biting their fingernails for a few months. Meanwhile Blizzard are likely moving forward toward their first moments of doubt regarding WoW since, well, maybe ever.

I believe It's only close to that with the 2-3rd weeks by including pc sales . EA's press release was about shipping (even if its technicality) Some were even perplexed (fanboys giggidy even) by it not selling more .

And if your going to mention budget cost and dev time , dont forget also that ME2 doesnt have subs , SWTOR does .

I'm aware that ME2 has no subs. TOR will NEVER break even based on box sales alone. It's simply an impossible task. It would have to be the best selling game of all time by a huge margin. That's what makes SWTOR such a gamble. They must maintain at least a reasonable subscription base for quite a while to break even. Then (and only then) will it be the cash cow they invested in. I don't know what the timeline on that is, but you have to admit that EA is going to be nervous about it for some time. And only time will tell if it was worth that massive budget and time investment. Otherwise, they may be wishing they had just made another Knights of the Old Republic.

If the official forums are anything to go by, it'll also be the fastest death in terms of MMO subscriptions as well. Not that I'm hating on the game at all but you have to worry about the long term future of the game when the forums are literally jam packed with complaints.